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Certainly mating in full sized equipment takes a lot of resources. And finding queens is very labor intensive if she can hide anywhere. So large producers of queens will use minis. Not being a full time beekeeper I often have things get in the way and those minis need tending at the right time or they swarm, or starve. Another down side (and I don't have the latest data on this) is that it appears queens that lay longer before being caged are more productive. So the sized box that allows the queen to lay the optimum amount (whatever that is) is best. I think if you are only raising 100 queens or so per year using your standard sized frame is best. Most of our queens are raised to go in our summer splits for overwintering nucs. The few we sell can be easily found on the big frames. If I were doing 500 I would need more efficient queen catching.....
And msl, going from about 5 -20 colonies is easily done with standard equipment, esp if you time it right with your flows. And with the comb you had from dead outs you could almost double that or get a decent honey crop. Using 10 resource colonies can easily be split to 40 without additional drawn comb on hand all up to wintering strength by fall here in upstate NY (projected low of -8 on Feb 8th). Any comb given results in harvestable honey or another round of splitting.
Happy beekeeping!

Re: Queen Rearing with Michael Palmer method

And msl, going from about 5 -20 colonies is easily done with standard equipment, esp if you time it right with your flows.

sure, 2017 I did a 7x expsastion, on a good year, in full sized gear, with very little drawn comb.... (it was a split to far and I had to condensate some nucs come late fall)
But that was a good year, last year was NOT a good year.

Another down side (and I don't have the latest data on this) is that it appears queens that lay longer before being caged are more productive.

often repeated, almost never backed (and if your not caging and banking/shiping it won't mater.. as in my example of a BYBK saving swarms cells... Again my point is they are over looking a good tool, not that minis are right or wrong for a given sideliner)
There is one lonely Australian study that suggests better sruival, but the reality seems the longer catch cycle alsos mean you can be more selective , pinching poor brood patterns/drone layers and leaving better queens.. not necessarily creating them. Tested vs untested queens
Its worth a read, but it dosent show a significant ovariole difrance as some claim ovr.jpg
In fact it shows some odd things.... clipping the wings at 14 days gives larger sperm loads. being in the center position on the cell bar led to less ovaries and had a bigger impact than time spent in the mateing nuc, Banked queen performing better then fresh caught, etc that makes a lot of the data suspect, as does the very poor mating of the queens in general with a very low sperm count https://www.agrifutures.com.au/wp-co...ons/03-049.pdf

Laidlaw (1979) says "Young queens mated from nuclei are ready to use as soon as they begin to lay. They are now as good as they will ever be" Contemporary Queen Rearing, page 109

"oh well, let us stick to science. let them have their beliefs and intuitions!" -Medhat Nasr

Re: Queen Rearing with Michael Palmer method

What is the reason for queen wing clipping?

I believe it was originally conceived as a means of controlling swarming. If the queen's wing is clipped she can't follow the bees into the trees, and will instead be in the grass in front of the hive. However, if that happens the bees will (mostly) go back to the hive and just wait until they swarm with a virgin. Therefore, queen wing clipping has deservedly fell out of favor.

Re: Queen Rearing with Michael Palmer method

It is the standard method for professional beekeepers and with the use of entrance boards/landing boards down to the ground, the queens will crawl back up into the hive. Clip only one wing, so the queen flies in circles in front of the hive. If you clip both wings, the queens hop and hop further away from the hive.

Clipping wings buys you valuable time so you don't need to check the hive every five/seven days. Instead you only need to check every two weeks.

Checking hives for swarms cells cost you a lot of honey. By checking for swarm cells you hinder the hive to work properly for that particular day. The honey income of one day is lost. Say 3 kg of honey per day per hive. I check 100 hives a day for swarm cells, making a loss of 300 kg per day. If I save three days of checking hives, by clipping wings, I harvest a ton of honey more per 100 hives, only by not disturbing the bees. Less work, more honey.

Brother Adam clipped every single queen before he introduced her into a hive. You can read this in his book.

Re: Queen Rearing with Michael Palmer method

I try to mark every queen in my operation for obvious reasons, but not every queen is clipped. However, I do clip every breeder queen. Yes, clip just one wing. Once, I fell way behind on inspections and found my breeder in a small cluster a few feet away from her colony. I was able to pick her up and start a new colony. After that experience I'm a true believer in clipping breeders. Should every queen be clipped? Not sure, but probably (if done well) it wouldn't hurt. This will obviously not prevent swarming, but "may" enable recovering the swarmed queen. Of course, you still need to find her on the ground before other bad things happen.

Re: Queen Rearing with Michael Palmer method

joshk

I used Palmer's methods last year, but in minature. I use mostly intermediate size frames (1" deeper than a medium) in my hives. I made a double deep, five frame nuc with these hives. I'd shake in bees and add frames of capped brood from other hives in the yard just as Mr Palmer describes. I'd put in about 20 grafts per "cycle". As it was my first year grafting I'd get about half of those to take. This worked very well for me, the hive made some honey during the process too!

As others have said the making of the cells is easy, getting to a mated queen, not so much. I used a combination of traditional nucs and the double styrofoam mini nucs from Mann Lake. I like these because the frames are a bit larger (they're like a 1/2 medium). After the queen rearing season I intended to round up the little frames and overwinter in some boxes I made for them that hold five and stack them three high. In practice I lost interest in get this done 'cause it was so **** hot in September this year! I have, however, overwintered two three frame clusters. I've had to feed them honey a few times but they're still hanging in there. Of course our winters are fairly mild, but we have gotten into the low twenties a couple of times. Going forward I plan to use the mini's for queens that I intend to sell.
I've made some three frame nucs to use to mate queens for my own use. That way I can do a newspaper combine to requeen full sized hives.

Re: Queen Rearing with Michael Palmer method

i use MP queen rearing technique and the queens that are produced are huge!

Its really not very difficult to do and im at best average at grafting. The 10/10 method provides so many nurse bees that they tend to compensate for my grafting skills.
I have had really good success doing this the last couple years and will be again using this method to graft 40-50 queens this year.